Former college football player Jaylen Johnson confused his mother for an intruder late last week and allegedly shot and killed her.
The New York Post reported Johnson now faces a manslaughter charge.
Johnson lives in Olivette, a St. Louis suburb, and he allegedly shot his mother, Monica McNichols-Johnson, around 730 a.m. Thursday morning.
Paramedics rushed to the scene but McNichols-Johnson did not survive.
KSDK noted that attorney Will Goldstein said, “I got a frantic call from Monica’s father telling me what happened.”
Goldstein added, “Jaylen thought there was an intruder coming from the backdoor and he fired shots, and this thing is all tragic and he hasn’t stopped crying since.”
Johnson is currently being held on a $100,000 bond.
Goldstein intimated that “easy accessibility to guns” may have played a role in the incident.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a pro-staffer for Pulsar Night Vision. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at
